US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are polarizing leaders, but with this accord they have united two enemy states along common interests. While not singular, it is momentous. It is thus unfortunate that it is being derided by some who are unwilling to appreciate the value and potential virtuous cycle this accord may lead to.

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Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan) tweeted, "We won't be fooled by another Trump/Netanyahu deal." IfNotNow, a progressive Jewish American activist group opposing the Israeli presence on the West Bank, said, "There is nothing to celebrate about Trump & Netanyahu's latest sleight of hand, which once again, seeks to distract from their failures in leadership as they face an ongoing pandemic, economic crisis, civil unrest, & plummeting support from the public."

Jamal Zahalka, a Knesset member who is a part of the Joint Arab List, tweeted that this agreement is a bad one made by dangerous people. One would also expect that organizations such as the Jewish Voice for Peace, whose main goal is achieving peace between the Palestinians and Israelis, would embrace this peace accord as the first step in this direction. But alas, they denounced this agreement as "is nothing more than theatrics."

Acknowledging this achievement and its potentially huge downstream effects should be an obvious step, and indeed many people on the left, among them Dennis Ross and Thomas Friedman, have done so. It may well be that those who oppose this peace agreement are simply so deranged with hate for Trump or Netanyahu that they can't bring themselves to give these leaders the credit for achieving it. But for some, more subtle reasons may be in play: They are either unwilling to accept that a peace agreement necessarily involves compromises from both sides or are unable to admit that their fundamental assumptions about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict were wrong.

The first overturned assumption of the left regarding the conflict is that resolving the Palestinian issue is the only way for achieving normalization with the Arab world. Netanyahu, however, has repeatedly emphasized that the Palestinians are not the key to Middle East peace. The reason is explained thoroughly by Micah Goodman in his book Catch 67. Goodman contends that Palestinian recognition of a Jewish state in the land of Israel is tantamount to a renunciation of their Arab-Muslim identity as it sees the Jews as a colonial force that forbids non-Muslim sovereignty in a holy Muslim territory.

This Arab-Muslim solidarity has persisted for so long that breaking with it would result in an identity crisis. Thus, given a choice between an independent Palestinian state alongside an Israeli one versus retaining their Arab-Muslim identity, Palestinian leaders consistently choose the latter. The longer they hold out, the more impossible the choice becomes. They are trapped in a vicious cycle.

Netanyahu hoped to bypass the Palestinian identity crisis by working directly with the rest of the Arab world. This way, when the Palestinian leaders realize that their brethren have made peace, the price of choosing it themselves is cheaper. It does not come at the cost of losing their Arab-Muslim identity. They would be free to choose independence.

The second overturned assumption was the "land for peace" formula. That is, a peace plan must include Israeli land concessions. This formula, preached by the left in Israel and liberals in the United States since 1967, was proved wrong with the UAE deal. The only concession made was Israel's agreement to give up, for now, its intention to extend its sovereignty into parts of Judea and Samaria in the West Bank, which may not have happened anyway. The new formula is "peace for peace." This is a novel approach based on shared interests that sees Israel as a desired ally with economic, geopolitical, and military power.

The Trump and Netanyahu administrations have worked closely together to make Mideast peace a reality. In 2018, the Trump administration moved the US embassy to Jerusalem, thus recognizing it as Israel's capital. The following year his administration recognized the Golan Heights as a part of Israel. The year after that, the administration announced that Israel's West Bank settlements do not violate international law. All these actions were widely criticized by liberals and by many Arab leaders across the Middle East.

They claimed that these actions would lead to turmoil, cause a reversal of Israel's budding relations with Arab states and harm US efforts to restart Israeli-Palestinian dialogue. Instead, the opposite has occurred. The Trump administration's acts have bolstered the prospects of peace rather than undermined it.

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The Israel-UAE treaty is another fracture in the united Arab front. Until now, only two other countries have signed a peace treaty with Israel: Egypt in 1979 and Jordan in 1994. The agreement with the UAE will hopefully pave the road to warmer relations with the rest of the Arab world. Moreover, that this deal is on the heels of the unveiling of the Trump administration's "Peace to Prosperity" vision earlier this year, for which the UAE was present, signals to the Palestinians that the UAE has had enough of Palestinian rejectionism. Bahrain and Oman were also at the unveiling. Might they be next to change allegiances?

For some, a peace deal that doesn't include the Palestinians is not an achievement. But due to current Palestinian rejectionism, an agreement that does include them is simply not possible. Israeli accords made with Arab countries may well be what be the factor that brings the Palestinians to the negotiating table. The more Arab countries that follow the UAE's lead, the more likely it is that the Palestinian leadership will be forced to compromise. And it is only through a compromise that a greater peace can be achieved.

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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Many Jews feel guilty for the plight of the Palestinians. Beinart's way of dealing with these feelings is by eliminating the Zionist project – one of the most amazing success stories of national revival in history. Discussing the elimination of an existing state is unprecedented. Israel is not an idea. It has existed for 72 years. No other country in the world is under such non-stop debate about its right to exist while it already does so.

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Israel was built as a refuge state after the Holocaust and has served as such after many Jews were deported from Arab countries with nowhere else to go. Some of these deportees are still alive. Their descendants are thriving. Is it ethical, even reasonable, to suggest that their refuge state should lose its Jewish identity, their shield, and unite with an ethnic group with whom it has had a bloody conflict for many years in the name of peace?

There is no precedent for a successful reunification between two states entwined in a bloody conflict with different ethnicities and languages. Successful reunifications between East and West Germany or North and South Vietnam were possible because the people of those countries belonged to the same nationalities and were separated only by imperialistic circumstances. In fact, the trend in the last few decades among states with populations of people of different ethnicities, religions and languages is the dissolution of those states to several smaller ones. Examples include the former Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia and the states that were created in the aftermath of ethnic conflicts, such as South Sudan and Kosovo.

Israel's neighboring countries provide further proof. Lebanon, Syria and Iraq all contain different ethnic groups that have been fighting for decades. These conflicts take place despite the groups' shared history, language and culture – elements not shared by Israelis and Palestinians. Even among the Palestinians, a conflict exists between Hamas in Gaza and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. It's unclear how adding Jews to the mix will create a peaceful coexistence in one state. Considering the hostility and distrust – not to mention the cultural, economic, political, and social gaps between Jews and Palestinians – a civil war seems a more likely outcome.

Moreover, while many Israelis support the Palestinians' right for self-determination, as exemplified by the multitude of peace deals offered by the Israeli government representing them, what is the Palestinian objective? Beinart quietly omits the many times that Palestinian leaders rejected peaceful opportunities for resolution and statehood. Their leaders rejected the Peel Commission partition plan in 1937. They rejected the UN partition plan in 1947. They rejected former Prime Minister Ehud Barak's offer of 94% of the disputed territories in 2001 and former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's more generous offer in 2006. Presently, Palestinian leaders reject even a peace negotiation. Their message is clear: There is no plan short of the end of Zionism (Israel) to which they would assent.

The Jewish state, like any other state in the world, is imperfect. However, Beinart fails to mention that the surrounding Arab and Muslim countries are even less perfect. These countries are, by and large, authoritarian and unfree, and make little effort to integrate their Palestinians, improve their conditions or offer them citizenship. Even in Tunisia, which Beinart marshals as a singular example of Arab democracy even though it has only existed since 2011, one must be Muslim to be president; Islamic education is mandatory in schools; homosexuality is criminalized; spousal rape is legal; corruption is rampant both in the government and among the police; property rights are scant; the judicial branch doesn't fully exist; the legislative branch is defunded; and the executive branch has declared a permanent state of emergency since 2015. But Beinart doesn't suggest dismantling any of these countries.

Only his guilt drives him to hold Israel to an unattainable standard. Its inability to reach his bar implies its ultimate elimination. This is because for Beinart, the ongoing conflict is entirely the fault of Israeli Jews. The Palestinians' plight has nothing to do with their actions or decisions. They are unwitting pawns merely reacting to Israel's stratagems. Yet how is this outlook anything other than the racism of low expectations?

Perhaps most glaring, Beinart fails to discuss Jordan in his proposal. In Jordan, some 50% to 70% of the population is Palestinian. Wouldn't a one-state solution work better for the Palestinians in the West Bank and Jordan, who share language, religion, culture and even relatives, than in Israel where the Jews and Palestinians share distrust?

In presenting his solution, Beinart pushes many half-truths and inaccuracies to further his narrative. For example, "Israel is already a binational state. Two peoples, roughly equal in number, live under the ultimate control of one government." But Israeli Arabs represent only 20% of Israel's population. Beinart intentionally blurs the line between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, which has control over most of the Palestinians in the West Bank, because it serves his position; his solution is a few modifications away from reality.

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Israel is surrounded by enemies and fair-weather allies. It finds few outspoken defendants among the countries of the world. And Jewish history, predating Israel's existence, is a tragic story riddled with pogroms and inquisitions. The fact that Holocaust analogies and references resurface in Jewish discussions is not an equation of Palestinians with Nazis, but rather an articulation of a simple truth: Jews do not feel safe. We feel safer because a Jewish state exists, but not nearly as safe as, say, a Frenchman or an American. Beinart's proposal to eliminate the Jewish state certainly doesn't help us feel safer.

At any rate, how does Beinart envision living together peacefully in a binational state when, by his own account, one side views the other as the ultimate evil? He hopes that Jews and Palestinians can peacefully coexist in a binational state where everyone's rights are protected. As such, Jews are expected to depend on their long-time enemies for a safe haven. Palestinians, in turn, will happily share power with those from whom they've been trying to wrest it from and destroy for decades – a utopian experiment that, were it established, would likely prove catastrophic.

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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